Whanganui library card competition ends with four winners

Whanganui mayor Hamish McDouall with (from left) Reina Jones, Sophie Gilchrist, Maia Ras and Kaitlyn Spencer. Photo / Bevan Conley

The winners of the Whanganui Library's card design competition have been revealed.

Every library card in the city will now feature art by Sophie Gilchrist, Kaitlyn Spencer, Reina Jones or Maia Ras.

Any form of art was welcome in the competition, but all designs had to incorporate the theme of 'Show us your story, Whanganui'.

The judges were Whanganui mayor Hamish McDouall, Whanganui Regional Museum public programmes presenter Lisa Reweti, and Sarjeant Gallery education officer Sietske Jansma.

McDouall and Reweti were on hand to give the winners their prizes.

"We had a pile of 55 entries to start with," McDouall said.

"After going through and saying 'yes, no, maybe', we'd only got rid of four.

"We eventually got down to 20, but even that was a struggle."

One Whanganui icon that kept on coming up through the entries was the octopus from Kowhai Park, McDouall said.

"It was in everything, and we eventually had to decide that it would only appear in two of the winning designs.

"There was were some obvious standouts, and Sophie's work is just an extraordinary piece.

"We were all really touched by Kaitlyn piece as well, with the girl sitting by herself, reading by the [Whanganui] river."

Reweti said it was an honour to be given the job as judge, even if it was a hard one.

"It's a combination of my two favourite things - art and books," Reweti said.

"The calibre of entries was really, really high.

"You just can't resist Reina's alien octopus, and of course everyone's favourite - Kowhai Park [Maia]."

The Kowhai Park octopus featured in many of the 55 entries. Photo / Bevan Conley

Reina Jones said she had a few ideas before she started the project.

"I wanted to come up with something that said 'that's Whanganui' when you saw it.

"It took about a week to finish."

Maia Ras said she sketched out her design to start with, before rubbing out any "messy lines" and moving into the layers of colour.

It took "a very long time" to complete her entry, Kaitlyn Spencer said.

"I didn't expect to be one of the winners."

Kaitlyn's mother, Felicity Spencer, said she was proud that Kaitlyn had completed the project completely on her own.

"Some times you have to jolly your kids along, but she was completely independent from start to finish."

For Sophie Gilchrist, art was something she would be doing for the rest of her life.

Her entry to the competition took two weeks to complete.

"After playing around with a few things I ended up hitting on the main subject of a bird," Gilchrist said.

"I wanted books in there, I wanted the [Whanganui] river in there, and I wanted Mt Ruapehu in there.

"It eventually all boiled down to this one composition."